Dimming Radiance
by Chrizzel28
Summary: While Ike is fighting the Black Knight, his skills fail him, making his sister pay the price...


The sound of swords clashing filled the halls of Nados Castle, otherwise eerily silent, as even the footsteps of the warriors were muffled by the red carpet they were on. Neither the blue haired swordsman nor the Black Knight really had the upper hand, Ike only having a small edge from having his sister heal him at a distance. The only cover she had were a few pillars strewn across the room, and even then they didn't help too much. However, soon after the fight started, footsteps could be heard from the hallways at the back of the room.

"Protect the Black Knight!" A Daein soldier shouted as he stormed in, his voice laced with panic. However, the Black Knight was seemingly insulted by this, wanting to finish his fight with Ike himself.

"Do not interfere! This man is my prey! I need no assistance!"

"Oh! Then...uh... Hey, get that girl! Get her before she flees!"

"Get out of here, Mist!" She could hear her brother shout at her, while she tried to keep her composure, despite the soldiers closing in on her.

"No! I'm not leaving you! I can protect myself. I won't run away!"

Ike didn't react though, being too busy trying to deflect the Black Knight's blows. Mist had to try and keep her distance, healing Ike whenever she saw an opening for it. The hardest part was avoiding the soldiers that were out for her, slowly driving her into a corner.

As she tried moving past them to heal Ike, she was blocked by a lance's shaft. Before she could react, she was suddenly dragged off her horse, causing it to panic and flee through the open doors in the back. She tried screaming, but it was quickly cut off by the hand of a Halberdier. She was then let outside through the nearest hallway. The last thing she saw before the doors closed behind them was Ike running towards her, before being cut off by a sword beam right ahead of him, forcing him to focus on his fight with the Black Knight.

They passed through several hallways, and the moment they were outside, she could see that her horse was captured and bound to a post. While she was partially relieved that it was unharmed, she also felt bad that it had been captured. However, this soon became less of a priority, as one of the Halberdiers had brought along some rope. One of the men pressed her arms against her back and folded them over one another, before the one with the rope tied her arms in that position. She tried kicking and screaming, but it didn't help at all. To silence her, one of the Halberdiers took off her scarf, formed a ball with it and shoved it in her mouth, after which it was stuck in place using a loose piece of cloth.

"So… What now?" The one that was still holding her by the shoulders asked.

"If we retreat now, we can get away easily. We just take the girl, interrogate her or something, and see where we go from there. Sound good?"

"We'll do that, then. What if that guy follows us though? He seemed pretty damn tough..."

"No chance. Like he'd defeat the Black Knight. And even if he did, do you honestly think he could track us down?"

"Good point… Still, let's hurry up to be sure, before any of his reinforcements follow."

They mounted her on her horse and attached a fairly short leash to the necks of both her and her horse, forcing her to keep her balance during a painfully slow trip, one that was long in both distance and time in a forest where everything seemed to blur together, giving her a feeling of being lost. She tried to tune out the conversation between the two Halberdiers, until she realised they had started talking about her.

"Think she'd be worth selling?"

"Nah, human slaves aren't worth half as much as those filthy sub-humans. I say we should just off her and be done with it."

She started whimpering in her gag, her panic getting worse.

"I don't know, seems like a waste… Mind if I keep her? I have_ just_ the way to make her feel at home." The man's tone had an edge to it... It sounded like he lusted for her.

Hearing this, Mist's whimpering only got louder as the tears started welling up, unsure which option would be more merciful. Throughout the rest of the trip, she could barely hear the soldiers talk over her own sobbing, though they simply ignored her.

The marching eventually came to a halt as they reached a small fortress, where Mist was unmounted and guided through some hallways. The only light was coming from a few torches on the walls, their spacing still leaving a lot of the area in the dark. At the end of a hallway there was a wooden door to the left. It creaked as they opened it, revealing a staircase leading underground. From up there, she could only see some chains on the wall that were just barely lit by the torch at the bottom of the stairs, but those chains were all that she needed to see to understand that it was a dungeon.

She was led down the stairs by one of the guards, and then into the darkness. She couldn't see much, if anything, but she could faintly hear breathing and sobbing. The fact that the guard didn't seem to have any trouble navigating the dungeon was surprisingly unnerving as well, as it led her to the conclusion that he knew this place just a bit too well. Even if it didn't feel that complex when walking through it, it felt like some sort of routine.

After a few minutes of walking, he pulled her towards a wall. By now her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could not only see the chains on the wall, but the prisoners in identical chains spread along the walls as well. She couldn't make out in what body part the limbs of the prisoners were tied to, but she quickly found out that they would be attached to her upper arms. While her legs weren't bound, the shackles still made it impossible to move more than a single large step.

"Now, be a good girl and don't struggle, I'll be back soon." The Halberdier said as he walked into a door that was barely visible in the darkness, even when opened. She could see light leaking through the cracks in the door soon after, but it wasn't enough for it to make much of a difference in terms of sight.

While it's hard to get any grip on time without any light from outside slipping in, it felt like hours before the man returned, leading a girl to her chains just like he had done to her earlier. Before Mist could draw any conclusions about what happened inside that room for all that time, she was already approached by the Halberdier again. She tried struggling as he grabbed her leash, but she knew it was futile. Her struggling was a sign that there was at least some hope left in her, that somehow it could all still change.

Once inside, a torch was lit, and she saw something that surprised her quite a bit. There was a crude imitation of a horse in the middle of the room, made from wood. Its most worrying feature was its rather harsh angle on the top though. It took a few seconds to sink in, but once it did, her heart sunk.

"Like it? Don't worry, you'll get used to it." the man said, before he ripped her skirt off, revealing her somewhat short boxers. She whimpered in her gag once more, but like the times before, she was ignored. He lifted her up and put her on top of the wooden horse, the extreme pain greeting her the moment he let go, as her whole body's weight was being supported by her crotch. He then attached her ankles to the bindings on her arms with some more rope, forcing her legs to remain at least partially bended.

"Now, if you try to get off this thing, I _will_ make this worse for you. Got this?"

Mist simply nodded, understanding the man probably wasn't bluffing...

She had to live like this until she was freed a few days after the war ended, several weeks later. While she mostly recovered from the trauma, there would still be moments where she would cry for no apparent reason for more than a year...

**There, besides the ending being rushed in hindsight, this is definitely my best work so far. Sorry for the two people actually interested in my work: I uploaded this to my Deviantart account quite a while ago, but I never got around to uploading it here. Now to upload the other work that was already on there and then I can just continue with my next fic without this on the back of my mind.**


End file.
